Birmingham Post Office
The Birmingham Post Office is a regional facility of the United States Postal Service which operates 26 individual post office locations in Jefferson County (all with ZIP codes beginning with 352). The enterprise is overseen by the Postmaster of Birmingham and currently employs 850 workers and handles 250,000 daily deliveries. The main downtown post office is located at 351 24th Street North.
History
Birmingham's first post office was established on September 5, 1871, before the city was officially incorporated. In late September or early October 1874, it moved to a building on 2nd Avenue North nearly opposite of the offices of the Birmingham Iron Age. In 1884 the post office, headed by postmaster T. U. Green, was located at 2010 1st Avenue North.
The Wright Building on the northwest corner of 19th Street and 3rd Avenue North served as the location of the post office from 1883 to 1893, when a new U.S. Court House and Post Office was erected on the southwest corner of 2nd Avenue North and 18th Street.
In September 1898 Birmingham joined Richmond, Vicksburg, Atlanta and New Orleans as one of the only Southern cities with house-to-house mail service. Residents who installed one of four types of patented mail boxes could use them for outgoing and delivered mail.
After four decades the 1893 federal building was considered an impediment to progress and was demolished. A grand new Birmingham Post Office and Federal Court was then built on the 1800 block of 5th Avenue North, opening in 1921.
Current building
In the early 1970s, the Birmingham Post Office moved to a new $12 million modern sorting facility on the west side of 24th Street North between 3rd and 5th Avenue North. Construction began in 1968, before demolition of the nearby Birmingham Terminal Station began. Charles H. McCauley Associates designed the brown brick and precast concrete building.
References
- "The Postoffice [sic] will be removed to 2d avenue [sic] next week into a building nearly directly opposite the Iron Age." (September 24, 1875). Birmingham Iron Age, page 3.
- "Will Take Mail From Your Door: Only Thing Necessary is to Provide a Box." (September 17, 1898) The Birmingham Age-Herald, p. 5
- Beiman, Irving (June 25, 1967) "Design OK’d for big, new post office.” The Birmingham News
- Kent, Dawn (October 23, 2009) "Postmaster adds his stamp to city history." The Birmingham News